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In this article, guest blogger Nick Williams extends creating a gauge chart. Nick is an Access tutor based in the UK.

Here you’ll learn to create a slightly more advanced kind of Gauge chart with will actual have a reference gauge and pointer to indicate the desired value. You can refer to the advanced Gauge Chart tab of the embedded Excel file.

Let’s get started.

Let’s assume we want to represent 140 as a pointer in the range of 180 and we have 3 categories in the gauge at intervals of 60 each. For this setup, we will create the data table accordingly

Insert 60 in B2, B3 and B4 for each category in the gauge chart

Add sum of B2:B4 in B5. Add the pointer value in C2(in this case 140). 1 or 2 in C3 which defines pointer width and enter this formula in C4: SUM(B2: B5)-C3-C2

The formula helps in creating the remaining value of the Pie chart

Now Select the range A1:C5 and Inset a Pie chart by navigating to the Charts section of the Insert Ribbon. After inserting the chart, in the Design tab of Chart Tools ribbon select Change Chart Type

Select combo chart from bottom left of the pop up window generated

Select Doughnut chart for Range series and Pie for the Pointer series. Make sure the Secondary Axis check box is ticked for the Range series. Then Click OO to plot the graph

Remove the legend and the title or modify the title as per your requirement

Right click on the chart area and select Format Data Series

This will open a section to Format the Data series on the right

Make the angle of the first slice as 270° of both the Doughnut and Pie Chart. You can switch between the series by clicking the respective graph and set the Doughnut hole size to 60

Now click on the bottom half of the Doughnut chart to modify the format of only that slice (You might have to click twice if the slice isn’t selected). Click on the paint bucket icon available on the right. In the Fill section select no fill

You can select No border in the border section, remove the border from all the other slices

Repeat the same steps for the Pie Chart as well. One additional step for the Pie Chart would be to remove the fill of the initial slice that is the pointer value (the other big slice)

Now change the fill of the remaining 3 slices of the doughnut to indicate different categories. I’m formatting them to Green, Orange & Red for Low, Medium & High respectively

Now the chart should look something like the following:

Again, Select Change Chart Type from the Design tab of the Chart Tools ribbon. Here change the Secondary Axis to the Pie Chart or the Pointer series and click OK. Change the fill of the Slicer of the pointer to desired color (I’ve selected black)

Now, Select the entire chart area and in the fill, select no fill and No line in the border section

Position the graph in so that a cell aligns to the center space and reference that cell to the actual percentage we have plotted (here 135)

Remove Gridlines by unchecking Gridlines from the Show section of View ribbon

Now we have an advance gauge chart created:

Vary the pointer value in the initial table to see the graph change. As mentioned earlier even a formula can be written to determine the position